Buy Plants when It’s Snowing!

If you love to get your hands dirty in the garden, winter can be a costly time of year. That’s because you can continue to shop for new garden plants even when a blanket of snow is covering your gardens.

I have discovered that buying plants online is very satisfying. First, you have unlimited online resources to choose from because most garden nurseries have a website. You can also visit the online plant auctions like the Lily Auction and the Hosta Library Auction. Whether it is a garden nursery or a specialty farm growing a particular type of plant, like hosta or daylilies, the variety of plants online is limitless.

Hosta Lakeside Love Affair (online purchase-New Hampshire Hosta)

It is easy to compare plants online. One of my favorite pastimes in winter is to research and compare “must have” plants. Collecting online photos of your favorite plants and placing them in a file to compare and contrast varieties helps me choose the best plants for my garden. I also compare multiple images of the same variety online to be sure the picture is truly representative of the plant.

Daylily Lock Ness Monster (online purchase-Partridge Hill Gardens)

Purchasing plants online saves time. Instead of driving from one garden center to another, I can simply search, buy and have the plants delivered when it is best for me to plant. In the spring, it feels a little like Christmas each time a package arrives at my front door.

Russian Comfrey (online purchase-Variegated Foliage Nursery)

You may have noticed that I did not suggest that purchasing plants online saves money. Online plant shopping is a little like being a kid in a candy shop. There are so many choices. If you love unique plants and are always searching for the new and unusual, you may have a tendency to buy more or buy more frequently.

Daylily Night Beacon (online purchase-Hallson Gardens)

Don’t hesitate to buy plants online. I have been buying plants online for more than six years and have been very pleased by the quality of the plants received and how quickly they acclimate to my garden. The next time you need a garden fix in winter, shop for your favorite “must have” plant online.

A Magical Children’s Garden

You do not have to be less than four feet tall to enjoy the Children’s Garden at the Coastal Maine Botanical Garden in Boothbay. This magical garden is a delight for all ages, with lots of whimsical features and touchy-feely activities.

What is so unique and fun about this particular garden is the unexpected. When you enter the garden, you are greeted by giant carved stone whales that send up a surprise spray of water every so often. This is a great place for kids to play on a hot summer’s day. And the adults can enjoy the nearby hanging rocking chairs and benefit from a little wet mist too.

The garden is an explosion of color and on one path you’ll see a rainbow of blooming flowers. This path takes you to an adorable picket cat fence surrounding a little cottage with grass growing on the roof. Next door kids can check out the story barn and pick out a book to read in the giant story teller’s chair. Nearby there is a cute little chicken coop filled with colorful hens.

For the high energy kids, a huge maze and a fun “stump jump” will keep them busy for hours. This is just a sampling of the interesting and interactive displays in this adorable garden. The next time you are in Maine, stop by the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens - you won’t be disappointed.

Do You Know Your Zone?

The plant hardiness zones identified by the USDA can help people select the plants that may grow successfully in their gardens. The zones are based on average low temperatures in the winter for different areas. The lower the zone number, the colder the winter.

The USDA recently updated the zone maps due to our warming climate. In my zip code, we moved from zone 6a to 6b. The average low winter temperature in 6b is 5 degrees warmer. A 5 degree shift in temperature does not sound like much, however as plant collector, I may have more confidence buying zone 6 plants than I have had in the past.

You can find the zone for a plant you are purchasing on the plant tag. I find this information helpful as I like to travel long distances for specialty nurseries and buy online - usually outside my zone.  Check out the updated USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Maps and be sure to check out the zone for your zip code as the zone can vary from one town to another.

My 2011 Hosta WOW

Hosta Alex Summers has become one of my favorite hostas in the garden. Named for one of the founders and first president of the American Hosta Society, Alex Summers, my beautiful specimen was acquired in a Garden Web Hosta Forum swap in 2007. It can take a hybrid hosta up to five years or longer to mature. This hosta only took four years to wow me.

Alex Summers fits the hosta 10 foot rule. The rule is not about the size of the plant. A plant can fit the rule if its form and color are unique and can be easily identified from 10 feet away. Alex Summers grows upright and has very wide leaves with green centers and irregularly streaked chartreuse margins. This plant offers one of the better hosta flower displays too.

I’m not crazy for hosta flowers – it’s all about the foliage for me. Most hosta flowers grow tall, flop and look messy. I prefer hosta flowers that are tucked neatly in the leaves or are growing just above the foliage. However, the flowers on Alex Summers are quite lovely, growing very upright on strong flower stalks. The deep purple color of the flowers was a perfect complement to the Purple Parasols Stokes’ Aster growing below the hosta and the Red Bud Forest Pansy tree behind.

If you like hosta, I would recommend that you plant Alex Summers in your garden.

Showboats of the July Garden

Daylily Susan Weber

One of my favorite plants electrifies the garden with a riot of color in July - the glorious daylily. These lovely flowers come in every imaginable color, from yellow and orange, to red, purple and almost blue, and every color in between. The botanical name for daylily is Hemerocallis, which in Greek means “beautiful for a day”.

Daylily Lake Norman Spider

An unknown yellow gift from a friend.

Each flower bud will last for a day, however each plant typically produces a large number of buds.  A single variety can bloom for a couple of weeks or more. There are early, mid and late bloomers and if you select your plants carefully, you can spread color over the peak bloom period of July and add varieties that bloom in August and September too.

Daylily Dawn's Echo

There are a few things you will want to consider in addition to the bloom period when you are selecting daylilies for your garden The flowers come in different sizes from miniature (flower under 3” in diameter), small (flowers from 3 to 4.5”), and large (blooms greater than 4.5” across). And while large flowers are showy, some of my favorite varieties display a lot of small flowers in bloom as the same time.

Daylily Vision of Beauty

The flower stalks come in a wide range of heights, from low to medium and tall (ranging from 6” to 36”). The height of the plant should be considered when placing daylilies in your garden, providing an opportunities to create interesting combinations of short and tall varieties, blooming at the same time or at different times.

A tall daylily - Femme De Joie

Daylilies are wonderful, care-free garden plant. They can grow in a wide variety of soil and light conditions and are very heat tolerant.

Daylily Victoria Grace

One of the things I appreciate the most is that they grow well in a hot sunny border and perform well in dappled shade garden. I prefer gardening in the shade and like to mix daylilies with my hostas and other shade plants, creating a nice mix of foliage and color.

A spider daylily Miracle

Daylilies do not have any significant pests to worry about. The only real maintenance is managing the size of the plant clump, as they multiply freely from one year to the next. However this problem is easily solved simply by sharing daylilies with your friends.

Daylily Rainbow Candy

What’s in a Garden Name?

Walkway Garden

 Do you have a name for your garden or names for your individual gardens - names that conjures up images of beauty, creativity, or even humor? New England is home to many wonderful gardens with intriguing names, like Rosecliff or Blithewold or Merryspring to name a few. These names conjure up images of what the garden might look like. I consider myself a creative type; however my garden names are much more functional.

Yellow Twig Garden

Most of my gardens are connected and flow through the yard like a brook flows through the woods. However I have 16 different garden names to identify different areas in the garden. These names are usually very practical and simply help me to identify where my plants live. Oh, once in the while a garden name may be inspired by some interesting element in the garden. However, more often the names are the result of a dominant plant, color or location in the yard, East Side, Katsura Garden, or Bird House.

Perennial Border

Robyn's Nest Garden

This year I prepared a new garden bed in the last uncultivated area in my yard. For a number of years, every time I walked by, the area sang out, “Plant me”. All summer I thought about names for this final garden that would be home to a sea of hostas. My inspiration was a stone planter in the shape of a woman’s head with seashells in her hair; garden art that looked a little like Greek sculpture. And then the name came to me. This last garden, the one that had been calling to me for years, would be the Sirens’ Garden.

Garden Inspiration

Garden tours can be very inspirational. They can fuel your passion for gardening and they are a great way to get new design ideas.

Have you ever gone on a tour and compared and contrasted the tour gardens against your own? You might find this exercise helpful if you have some specific objectives for your gardens. For example, perhaps you are working to build the bones of your garden; shrubs and trees that can add definition, diversity and winter interest.  Or, you are looking for ideas to help construct walls or paths.  If you have a focus, you will more successfully see what you are looking for in the gardens you visit.

This summer the Child Abuse Prevention Council of York County Maine hosted a wonderful tour – Private Gardens of the Kennebunks. There were some beautifully landscaped properties on this tour. I was surprised to see how extensively hosta was used in most of the landscapes (a personal interest of mine).

The gardens selected clearly had an appreciation for hardscaping.  There were many fine examples of stonewalls, walkways and even a beautiful outdoor fireplace. Here are some examples:

I probably noticed the hardscaping because I was looking to see how others used it in their garden designs.  If you would like to see more photo's of this garden tour, check out the video 2009 Private Gardens of the Kennebunks' on the Child Abuse Prevention Council website.

Frosted!

Today I woke up to a beautiful frosty morn. As I viewed my gardens from the window, I felt like I was in a black and white dream.  The scene looked liked a lot like photos taken with infrared film.

Only this was not a dream, it was real and all the color in the garden was an eerie dream-like hazy white.

I picked up my camera and tried to capture the effect. I had to work fast because like a dream, the scene would not last. At about 8:15 a.m. my frosting melted away. I had just enough time to capture a few pictures before it was gone. Enjoy! 

A closeup of a Snow Mountain Hydrangea tree is a fitting end.